In thermal dye sublimation printing, it is generally well known to render images by heating and pressing one or more donor materials such as a colorant (e.g., a dye) or other coating against a receiver medium having a colorant receiving layer. The heat is generally supplied by a thermal print head having an array of heating elements. The donor materials are typically provided in sized donor patches on a movable web known as a donor ribbon. The donor patches are organized on the ribbon into donor sets; each set containing all of the donor patches that are to be used to record an image on the receiver web. For full color images, multiple color dye patches can be used, such as yellow, magenta, and cyan donor dye patches. Arrangements of other color patches can be used in like fashion within a donor set. Additionally, each donor set can include an overcoat or sealant layer.
Thermal printers offer a wide range of advantages in photographic printing including the provision of truly continuous tone scale variation and the ability to deposit, as a part of the printing process a protective overcoat layer to protect the images formed thereby from mechanical and environmental damage. Accordingly, many photographic kiosks and home photo printers currently use thermal printing technology.
Some thermal printing systems are adapted to print on individual sheets of receiver media. Thermal printing systems that are used for large volume applications (e.g., photographic kiosks) commonly utilize roll-fed receiver media. The roll size media may have various fixed dimensions. For example, a common roll fed media size is 8.5 inches wide. This type of media is capable of printing 8.5×11 inch images, or any length image dependent on donor patch length, but are restricted to 8.5 inches wide. However, with the addition of a dual center slitter, two 4×6 inch images can be printed side-by-side with a 0.5 inch center waste strip. FIG. 5 shows a receiver tray commonly known in the art and used in current printing systems. This receiver tray receives the entire sheet of printed media, such as 8.5×11 inch, with no cutting into smaller prints, and stacking of the separate prints from multiple sheets of media. There remains a need in the art for a receiver tray with angled surfaces and a waste area, wherein individually cut smaller printed pieces of receiver media are received on the two angled surfaces of the tray and the waste strip of the receiver media is received in the waste area of the tray. There is also a need to automatically collate the images produced into an intended image order so that, instead of two stacks of images, the result of printing is one stack of ordered images.